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There is a lot of misinformation posted here so I thought I'd clarify this
thread. From my own experience,
1. I suggest you buy a BX or GX chipset based motherboard.
I have an ALi Alladin V based chipset with my AMD K6-2 350 and it's plenty
fast. However, I no longer recommend any chipsets other than Intel's.
I am still having problems with my tape drive and also with QP2's Virtual
program. For reasons I won't elaborate here, I think one or both
problems are attributable to the non-Intel chipset. I have been told
by Microsoft tech support, because Windows 98's memory routines/structure
are different from Windows 95, that also may be the reason why I am having
problems with QP2's Virtual. I am not going to do any more testing
to find out.
If you can only afford a Celeron CPU, buy a Slot
1 to Socket 370 converter. Do not buy a socket 370 board.
Sooner or later CPU prices will come down and you will be able to substitute
a Pentium III. They only cost $20. Celerons basically have the
same architecture. The only difference is that the Celeron has a
66Mhz front side bus and a 128K level 1 cache. In most cases, these
factors do not make a difference.
2. If you want the fastest performance in your video, wait until
the newer Intel chipsets come out with the new 4x AGP spec. Otherwise,
you can buy the new nVidia TNT2 Ultra or TNT10 in October. This is
really for gaming. Stock analysis really requires very little CPU
and video board bandwidth compared to what is available today. Creative
Labs and Diamond
Multimedia make good TNT2 Ultra boards.
3. If you want to do the absolute fastest
stock database searches you possibly can, then there is only
1 hard drive solution for you: SCSI/UW2. Buy a motherboard
with it built in. The SuperMicroP6SBU
at $320 would be a good choice. For a SCSI/UW2 hard drive, expect
to pay at least $340 USD for an IBM
9.1GB U2W at 7200
RPM and $600 for 10K
RPM. If you cannot afford the premium, buy the new $330 Western
Digital 18GB UATA/66 at 66MB/sec and 7200 RPM and a 66MB capable motherboard.
COMPUSA had this HD on sale for $270 with some other free hardware.
The best BX chipset based motherboard is the ABIT
BX6 2.0. It should also be 66MB/sec HDD capable.
4. For memory, if you want the fastest performance, as long as
your C:\WINDOWS\Win386.swp file is larger than 0 bytes, you should add
memory. Windows 98 is a memory hog compared to Windows 95.
You should have around 192MBs. If you have less, Windows 98 will
use the swapfile and you will wait for memory to be swapped out.
Memory is so cheap now, you can buy 192MBs of high quality Micron 8ns memory
at $150 (1-64MB & 1-128MB).
The most important thing to remember is to buy name brand items.
If you buy a clone, you will not receive regular driver updates and little,
if any, tech support. I suggest you either have someone build your
system or buy retail boxed items. This is especially true for your
hard drive, since it is the most delicate component in your system.
Increasing your memory a few MB's will NOT speed up your
database searches for one very simple reason: Your stock database
is at least 200MB's! The ONLY way you can accelerate
your database searches is to speed up your HDD. SCSI/UW2 @7.2K or
10K RPM is currently the fastest HDD technology available. It also
costs twice as much. A HDD's speed is measured by its average access
time (track to track) and RPM (latency). While 66MB's IDE drives
appear to be nearly as fast, this is not the case. SCSI/UW2 drives
are faster. If you want more details, go to the Adaptec
site for infomation. They had an article comparing SCSI and IDE but
I cannot find it now.
If you do buy the IBM SCSI/UW2 10K RPM HDD, make sure your system has
plenty of cooling. 10K is 2x faster than standard IDE HDD's so I
assume it will run HOT. ATX cases, unlike AT cases, have a poor design
for cooling. Air comes in through the front bottom and also the rear
top where the power supply is. This means the hot air will stay
in the case and circulate at the top. Last week I removed all the
components, used a Dremel tool to
enlarge the plastic grill slots on the front, cut out a hexagon in the
metal behind it (in front of the 3" front case fan), and cut a 3"x4" rectangle
underneath where the HDD sits. Most importantly, I cut out an octagon
at the top of the case (the case cover comes off in 3 pieces) and installed
a 3" fan there with upper and lower 3" chrome fan guards. This Martinez
custom cooling system I created enables cool air to enter through
the front bottom of the case and exit through the top. Since hot
air rises, this is a perfect cooling solution. The top of my case,
all of my drives, and even the CD's and floppies I insert no longer get
hot.
Hope this helps,
Daniel.
Nicholas Kormanik wrote:
You folks haven't mentioned what will happen with
MetaStock 7.0, when ever
that comes out. Maybe it will be able to avail of more RAM, etc.
Perhaps
buying a machine only thinking of using MS 6.5 may short change yourself
when the new version arrives.
Incidentally, I increased my RAM from 128 to 256 megs (in Win 98, PII
350,
ultra-EIDE), hoping that the explorations would be faster. Appears
that
absolutely *nothing* is faster, still crawls along in exploring 9000
issues,
taking about 15 minutes for a single exploration. I think my
solution is to
weed out securities, and end up with, say, 3000 or so.
Nicholas
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